Word: carbonation
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...many other scientists, he wanted to get back to independent research. He was taken on by the newly formed Institute of Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago, where he became fascinated by the faint natural radioactivity that pervades the atmosphere. A significant part of this activity comes from carbon 14, an unstable carbon isotope formed when cosmic rays hit nitrogen high in the atmosphere...
...hard to detect with the instruments that existed then, but Libby charged at the problem with his peculiar combination of creative abandon and meticulous care, and soon plucked a great prize. Since carbon 14 is mixed in the atmosphere, it is taken up by living plants, supplying a small part of the carbon in all living organisms. Its half-life is about 5,000 years, i.e., half its atoms disintegrate in that time. So when a plant or animal dies and ceases to take up fresh carbon 14, the radioactivity of its substance should decline with the passage of time...
Libby and a group of devoted associates worked for three years to perfect an "atomic calendar," ultimately achieved an accurate method of measuring the past with carbon 14. Refined and put into worldwide use, the method has strongly affected sciences as far apart as archaeology, geology and climatology. Once a New York newspaper misconstrued some remarks in a Libby speech to mean that he had accidentally come across the carbon 14 discovery, came out next day with a story headlined. SCIENTIST STUMBLES ON NEW METHOD. Back in the Chicago lab, Libby's assistants hit the ceiling, but regained their...
PLASTIC PRICES will come down as the result of an 18% price slash on Union Carbide & Carbon Corp.'s vinyl resins (used for raincoats, upholstery, garden hose, etc.). With Italian vinyls selling in the U.S. for 32? a lb., Union Carbide was forced to cut its price from...
...mainspring of life is photosynthesis, the process by which plants manufacture food out of carbon dioxide-and water under the influence of sunlight. So one of the problems of biology is to learn as much as possible about photosynthesis. If the process could be made more efficient, the world's food supply would take a large jump. Since photosynthesis depends on the energy of sunlight, it stops when a plant is in darkness. In fact it runs backward. A plant respires (breathes) like an animal, absorbing oxygen and giving off carbon dioxide, and biologists have assumed that the plant...